In the spirit of actually “showing” Fibromyalgia, I picked a day a couple weeks ago and documented it from start to finish. I want to try to show you what someone with a chronic pain condition experiences on their day-to-day.
Granted, everybody’s day is different of course, and sometimes I even have worse days than the one I documented for you. But I figured I’d take you with me as my husband and I ran some errands, did a date night, and just got some stuff done.
I took pictures as we went, all from my phone, so they’re not great or posed, and usually, I was trying to be very careful with my phone so I didn’t get it stolen. We had a lot to do on this day all over the city, but I tried to really keep track of how my pain was as we went so I could give you at least a little glimpse into a day with chronic pain.
Let’s jump into this day in the life (in Perú) with a chronic pain condition.
Plans For the Day
We were initially intending to get up early this particular weekend because of the number of things we needed to do. However, we ended up staying up way too late the night before talking to my sister, getting up as early as we had hoped didn’t happen. I’m not saying it was bad that we were chitchatting so late, it just happened. I’m going to tell myself that it’s okay and we’re going to move past it.
To be honest, though, I was woken up not by my alarm, but by a phone call. Due to the phone call, I did postpone all of my planned morning activities until the evening.
Pain Check: I was feeling pretty good. The pain was not bad and I felt good about facing all the things we needed to do.
After my phone call in the morning, I woke my husband up and we started our morning with a little bit of stretching and yoga. Followed by a shower and breakfast.
Heading Out
Originally we were planning on running some of our errands on Saturday and some on Sunday, but somewhere in there everything got moved to Saturday instead. We had a very full day ahead.
We left the house about an hour behind schedule around 10:00/10:15ish and took a moto taxi to the bus stop.
Wanting to be able to show you what it’s really like traveling in Perú in the city I took a picture every time we got on a bus or in a moto taxi. I figure showing you just how many things it takes to get from one place to another will also give you some perspective into what it’s like living with chronic pain in a foreign country.
Running around like this is exhausting for my husband, let alone for me with my chronic pain. We usually try to lump all of our errands together in one day so we don’t have to make so many trips.
Transport and Our First Stop
Our first bus was a 20-30 minute ride, it was full and we were unable to get any seats on it. We just tucked ourselves into a corner and road it out.
We were heading to this new vitamin shop that we had recently heard about that has a huge selection that the small pharmacies in our side of town don’t have.
Pain Check: My legs felt like they were on fire and the bottom half of my body was starting to really hurt. We had only left the house 40 minutes prior and things were not great pain-wise.
The vitamin shop was super interesting and a very different experience than we were expecting. We ended up spending way too long there trying to figure it all out. It was different in that we had to order stuff before we would go pay for it, but there wasn’t a catalog to browse and pick things out from. We went through the line quite a few times before we could get someone to explain the process to us so we could get what we wanted.
Endless Walking
After the vitamin shop, we had to catch another bus to our following location. There is a special bus in the area we were in that we wanted to ride, we waited around for it for a while, but then found out we were in the wrong area and the bus wouldn’t stop there.
We were going to walk to the proper area, but it was taking too long. Instead, we decided to walk up a block and a half, across a bridge, down and through a bit of a sketchy neighborhood.
The spot we were heading to for the bus is in the picture on the right. If you look across the river you can see a white van just off to the left of the center. There is no direct walking path to it, you have to walk all the way around to get to that street.
Lunch and a Movie
We ran to catch the bus right as they were taking off. This bus was empty and we got seats this time! The bus ride was a 45-minute-ish trip.
Pain Check: Feeling hot and exhausted. The long bus ride helped me recover a little after all that walking and running, but I was very sore, especially my legs and feet.
Around 1:00 we arrived at the mall, which is where we had lunch and bought tickets to a movie for our date night.
We had about 40 minutes to kill before we could watch the movie. We spent that time shopping for something else that we needed to get.
The movie was in Japanese, with Spanish subtitles. I mostly watched the pictures, though I tried looking for familiar sentences but they were speaking very fast and the subtitles were flying. I struggled and ate my popcorn.
Grocery Shopping
After the movie, we walked over to the grocery store to get a few things.
We were in a touristy area and the grocery store here has a wider selection of items than our normal store has. It’s fun to browse and find things we don’t normally get.
Since it was date night, we splurged a little and bought cheese!
…
Well, I was excited. You don’t have to be excited with me.
Heading Home
Pain Check: Completely and utterly exhausted and hurting. But happy.
Then we had to walk again.
Outside the building, all the way up the pathway. Across two bridges and then you usually have to run to catch the bus that is six buses back. The bus we want is always the last one in line. At least we got seats again this time!
This bus ride is 45 minutes to an hour, maybe more, depending on what traffic you get stuck in.
As we walked home from the bus stop, we bought bread and turkey at the bakery.
Evening To-Dos
Pain Check: We were both dying. Our feet were killing us from walking all day. My legs felt like they were on fire. And my stomach was bothering me.
We made a quick dinner and talked a little bit.
After dinner, I still had a long list of things from the morning that I needed to do. Which was mostly various sewing projects and blog work.
To make the most of the time I talk-to-typed this blog post while I pinned pieces together and cut fabric.
While doing sewing tasks that aren’t noisy but take time I usually watch YouTube or listen to music. I only had a few hours before bedtime and I didn’t want to forget all the things from today. I found sewing and talk-to-typing was definitely the best thing to do today instead of YouTube. At least this way I got a little bit of both done.
Final Thoughts
Final Pain Check: My overall pain wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be after a long day of walking. My feet were really hurting. My skin felt like it was on fire and my left hand had really bad pain. Otherwise, the pain wasn’t too bad. I was also having some weird upset stomach pain that was bothering me.
An interesting note, though I ended the day feeling relatively well, I then spent the next two days really sick and didn’t leave my bed.
That’s about it for me for an errand-running day in the life. My weekends tend to vary based off of the things we need to do. But when we have errands to run it’s about as busy and all over the place as today’s adventures were, the locations are just different.
I hope you enjoyed this day in the life post. Let me know if you’d like to see a more in-depth post on a workday with chronic pain. Or if any other topics seem interesting to you, let me know in the comments!
Remember to check out these posts to learn more about chronic pain:
Advanced Guide To Fibromyalgia
Experience A Different Quality Of Chronic Pain Life Abroad
Also, if you’re looking for an activity you can do on a bad flare day and from bed, download our free trivia here so that you can still participate in fun activities with your friends and family without ever leaving the comfort of your bed.
